The most comprehensive analysis yet of African genetic diversity was rightly hailed as “profoundly impressive” by Daniel MacArthur of Genetic Future. By looking at 2,400 people from 113 African populations, Sarah Tishkoff has “done justice to the sheer scale of the genetic diversity within the African continent.”

The Scandal of the Week award goes to pharmaceutical company Merck and publishing house Elsevier, following news that the former paid the latter to produce six fake journals promoting their drugs. Janet Stemwedel considers the story and the difference between fake journals and just plain bad ones.

Frank the SciencePunk challenged his Twitter followers to give him two unrelated topics to blog about. The result: a four-paragraph opus on cheese and Mars, with some time-reversal technology served on the side.

Mistletoe: not just an excuse for drunken smooching, but a successful sci-fi-worthy parasite. Christie has the details.

Cognitive Daily discusses SNARC, a strange phenomenon in number-recognition tasks where the reaction times of the left hand are faster for low numbers, and those of the right hand are faster for high numbers. As opposed to snark, a strange phenomenon where internet commenters write confrontational diatribes while mentally hi-fiving themselves.

Skeptical blogging, especially among the medical sciences, is a crowded arena, but there’s always room for new contenders if they write as well as Whitecoat Tales, the medical student behind the relatively new Beyond the Short Coat blog. Come for the scepticism, stay for the stories.